New Translations

I thought I'd start a thread where we can mention new translations of previously translated works that we've come across.

I'm looking forward to the new translation of Doctor Zhivago coming out --- Prevear & Volonovsky (sp?). I'll be interested in how they handle the poetry in particular.

I've (gasp!) never read Doctor Zhivago, but maybe this will inspire me to do so.

There is a newer translation of The Saga of Gosta Berling by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlof.

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143105909,00.html

First new English translation in 100 years.

It has been reported to me that there is a new translation of Madame Bovary out - anyone come across it?

Yes, it was given to me as a gift. The translation is by Lydia Davis, who also translated Swann's Way in the multitranslator version of In Search of Lost Time that came out several years ago, and it was her translation that finally propelled me through SW so I could read the rest of the novel. However, since I've read Madame Bovary twice (once in my teens, once in my 40s), I am not sure I want to read it again.

>6 rebeccanyc: yes, I last read it in my 40s also, and that's my thinking also. However, I will read the new Doctor Zhivago...

#2 The new translation of Doctor Zhivago by Pevear and Volkhonsky is out. I've seen it in bookstores, and the back cover (?) notes that Pasternak, who spoke English well enough to do some translating himself, never liked the original English translation. My favorite bookstore is hosting P&V this coming Saturday and I plan to buy Dr. Z then -- I've never read it.

>8 rebeccanyc: I have my copy (what's with the 30s/40s-ish cover?) and will get to it sometime. Did you get to the store Saturday?

I didn't go on Saturday (life was too crazy), but I'm going to stop by on the way home tonight and keeping my fingers crossed they may still have copies, even signed copies.

I'm just about to start the Pevear translation of Anna Karenina. I've
never read their work before but I hear this is magnificent. I can't wait to read the reviews of their Dr. Zhivago. This is a major event in publishing.

Personal reactions to a translation depend a lot on individual taste, but at the same time the quality of a translation is crucial to the appreciation of the original work. I often find myself preferring older - perhaps inaccurate - renditions over some of the so-called definitive modern translations, and I wonder how much re-translation responds to acknowledged deficiencies in long-established versions, and how much to the needs of the publishing industry. Pevear and Volokhonsky have been in vogue for several years, though last Saturday's Guardian had a none too complimentary review of the new translation of Dr Zhivago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-trans... . Hurray, I'll be keeping my battered old copy then!

That was an interesting article, and for me it boils down to a matter of taste. The author of the article prefers translators who try to make the translation sound like it was written in English, changing the text as necessary; P&V try to maintain more complete fidelity to the Russian original, even if doesn't sound as natural in English. I personally have enjoyed all their translations I've read, but it is certainly something to think about.

I was just checking another translation of Anna Karenina because there are a few sections where I can't make sense of what Pevear and V are referring to. Interestingly, in this older translation they refer to a servant as
Matthew, whereas Pevear calls him by his Russian name. It shows how much translation has changed over time.
In the July/August issue of Commentary magazine there is a damning article about P&V. I don't take Commentary seriously, but it is fun to read nonetheless.

Language isn't the barrier it used to be and that thrills me: be ambitious and read what people from other cultures think. Thank heaven for translators who lead the way. I needed to encounter i.e. ((Heer)) and ((Braudel)), Austrian and French historians to at last feel slightly loosened for the anglo-centric info stream I've been stuck in. btw My poetry was translated into Swedish for publication in that country. The translator was insulted at my wish to show both languages. He said I distrusted his ability. I meant I praised both processes and wanted to share the intellectual activity of interpretation. He dropped my manuscript and it's never been published, altho we did a tandem reading at the first ever Poesi Dagarna in Sweden, 1988.

>12 chrisharpe: this is VERY interesting (and now I'm nervous). When I do read the new translation, I intend to keep the old one nearby. I have some favorite passages and I'd like to compare. And, as I mentioned, I'd like to see how the handle the poetry. I'm not sure that translators of the prose are necessarily also the best translators of poetry, but we'll see.

I will keep my 3 old battered copies anyway!

Hahahaha, so now you can't read translations to relax, Avaland? I'm glad we have this group because I find translations quite problematic. I have been really put off some books by the English versions, whereas I have loved others perhaps because of the translator. I am always on the look out for translations that are widely recognised (not necessarily among academics, but within a wider readership) as doing justice to the original text. I have just begun Kadare's The Siege, the English text of which has come from the Albanian via French. You would not expect the final text to be particularly faithful to the original but, whatever the case, I think it reads beautifully. I look forward to hearing more about the new edition of Zhivago!

>17 chrisharpe: I read a fair amount of translations and really, only occasionally do I find one in which the English seems awkward. Sometimes it's the way the translators have decided to use slang and expletives. Other times it's just general bumpy - but if they were doing literal translations that might explain it.

Can someone recommend a good translation of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther?

I finished and reviewed the excellent small book The Waitress Was New in my thread...post #271.

The winter edition of Granta has come out with the best of Spanish and South & Latin American literature. It was featured today on NPR. http://www.npr.org/2010/12/17/132115006/the-new-literary-stars-of-spain-and-lati...

I'm deep into an ER book, Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami, translated from the Japanese. o_O Very Trainspotting.

>15 Niaih: niaih

That's a pity about your translator not wanting to show both languages. One of my favourite books of poetry is The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca in which the English translation is shown alongside the Spanish. My Spanish language skills being mediocre, I have always found it very satisfying to run my eye over the English translation and then to read the Spanish original (preferably out loud). Beautiful.

Edited to correct typo.

I've abided (abidden? abode?) by the terms of the Early Reviewers agreement and reviewed Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami in my thread...post #35.

I can't say it was a good or a bad translation, though I suspect it was very faithful to the original. It *feels* very translated, if that's at all clear.

The Center for the Art of Translation has posted an audio interview with Lydia Davis the translator for the new edition of Madame Bovary:

http://catranslation.org/blogpost/two-voices-an-evening-with-lydia-davis

I had a great time at the PEN festival in NYC this week, attending about five events and conducted one interview. When I get around to transcribing some of my notes, I cross-post the interesting bits somewhere in this group.

I'm eventually going to read that; I've read Madame B twice already and am not wowed by it, but Lydia Davis's translation of Swann's Way was what finally got me reading Proust, after decades of failure.

"Midaq Alley (1947) was first translated by Trevor LeGassick and published in English in 1966. The new translation, which is being completed by Humphrey Davies, is scheduled for release this November, a month before what would've been Mahfouz's 100th birthday."

From the Arab Literature (in English) blog:

http://arablit.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/forthcoming-this-fall-from-auc-press-re-...

New translation of Inferno: A New Translation by Dante Alighieri (Author), Mary Jo Bang (Translated)

On Sale Date: August 7, 2012 9781555976194, 1555976190 $35.00/$21.95 Can. Hardback / With dust jacket Poetry / General Graywolf Press 352 pages Black-and-White Illustrations Throughout


Award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang has translated the Inferno into English at a moment when popular culture is so prevalent that it has even taken Dante, author of the fourteenth century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, and turned him into an action-adventure video game hero. Dante, a master of innovation, wrote his poem in the vernacular, rather than in literary Latin. Bang has similarly created an idiomatically rich contemporary version that is accessible, musical, and audacious. She's matched Dante's own liberal use of allusion and literary borrowing by incorporating literary and cultural references familiar to contemporary readers: Shakespeare and Dickinson, Freud and South Park, Kierkegaard and Stephen Colbert. The Inferno--the allegorical story of a spiritual quest that begins in a dark forest, traverses Hell's nine circles, and ends at the hopeful edge of purgatory--was also an indictment of religious hypocrisy and political corruption. In its time, the poem was stunningly new. Bang's version is true to the original: lyrical, politically astute, occasionally self-mocking, and deeply moving. With haunting illustrations by Henrik Drescher, this is the most readable Inferno available in English, a truly remarkable achievement.

Wow! Mixing "Shakespeare and Dickinson, Freud and South Park, Kierkegaard and Stephen Colbert" into The Inferno! Not sure that's where I would want to start if I were to read it.

Antigonick Hardcover (ANTIGONE)
Anne Carson (Translator), Bianca Stone (Illustrator)

An illustrated new translation of Sophokles’ Antigone.

"With text blocks hand-inked on the page by Anne Carson and her collaborator Robert Currie, Antigonick features translucent vellum pages with stunning drawings by Bianca Stone that overlay the text.

Anne Carson has published translations of the ancient Greek poets Sappho, Simonides, Aiskhylos, Sophokles and Euripides. Antigonick is her first attempt at making translation into a combined visual and textual experience. Sophokles’ luminous and disturbing tragedy is here given an entirely fresh language and presentation. Thoroughly delightful."

New Directions, 180 pages, 978-0811219570, due out in May.

>30 avaland:: Call me skeptical, but with a list price of $24.95 and an Amazon preorder price of $14.78, I'm forced to doubt that this book is hand-printed on vellum.

>31 nathanielcampbell: It does sound a bit dubious (perhaps it was originally handprinted on vellum...)

I also noticed that New Directions is publishing 4 "new" Clarice Lispector titles, which new translations from the Portuguese, all due out in June. Here's a 2011 article in Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article...

There are two recent re-translations of Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov, one by Stephen Pearl and the other by Marian Schwarz. Both have been well received. The Stephen Pearl translation has enjoyed especially high praise from certain quarters.

I have the Marian Schwarz translation of Oblomov, and it's been languishing on the TBR pile for a while.

Ha ha. It's on my TBR pile, too!! I'll get there ... eventually.

Saw a first translation into English of Tove Jansson's Art in Nature

This is a 'new' Tove Jansson, published for the first time in English. Tales of obsession and ambition are revealed and sparkle 'like buried treasure'. An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.

Out in the UK from Sort of Books (yes, that's the publisher), in hardcover at the end of June.

I've been reading the Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell This has sparked my interest in finding a decent translation of the Orestia by Aeschylus. Put another way: are there any translations to definitely avoid? I want to read the play and then read Eugene O'Neill's play-cycle Mourning Becomes Electra

Just noticed a comment above on a new translation of Madame Bovary by Lydia Davis. There is also another new translation, by Adam Thorpe, brought out by Vintage Books in October 2011. It's available in hardback and on Kindle.